Fat loss on CICO?

(G. Andrew Duthie) #6

CICO doesn’t work, period. Yes, people lose weight over the short term. But caloric limitation reduces basal metabolic rate, and when you stop limiting calories, the weight comes back rapidly. Plus you feel like crap.

FWIW, there are many techniques that will work for losing weight in the short run. I had a period where I was just reducing portions, and measuring my food, and that moved the needle on weight significantly.

But the ONLY one that I’ve found that works consistently, and works to keep the weight off is Keto. And for me, at least, combined with IF and the occasional extended fast.

Hello! Ex-Atkins, new to KETO! Intro & questions
Lazy keto and weight loss
(Ross Daniel) #7

Well, you are simply “outrunning” your metabolism the way I look at it. So if you just reduce calories, but not the types of calories/macro balance, you are consuming less energy therefore you body tries to reach homeostasis by reducing your BMR. This doesn’t happen instantly and thus you can get ahead of it and cause your body to reduce weight, but while eating SAD and/or high carb, it is a poorly tuned loop and has a lot of what we call overshoot in controls engineering.

The weight you’d lose is not all necessarily fat weight either, your body will remove proteins as well to make up the difference. Things like your hair won’t grow as well/fast, nails, skin, if you go too low in calories you get other problems like women having no period, that sort of thing. You body has many ways it can reduce the amount of energy it requires.The ketogenic diet is known to be protein sparing, this is due in part to the fact that while not consuming many carbs and having lower insulin level our bodies properly utilize the fuel source: fat. Fat doesn’t cause that metabolic derangement.

Keto allows you to keep your BMR up, so in turn you burn more energy.

(Guardian of the bacon) #8

You can lose weight to a point on any diet. Most can lose some weight until they come up against their personal insulin base limit. Where that insulin set point is will depend a lot on how IR you are.

From what I have learned the only effective methods of moving the needle on your IR is to restrict carbs and to fast.

(Terri) #9

This is a great synopsis @rodan5150! Thank you for sharing it here.

(Ross Daniel) #10

Leptin also plays a role in this, it is sort of the “negative feedback” mechanism that your adipose tissue is supposed to excrete to let your body know you’re at the weight you need to be. Any derangement in your leptin sensitivity along with your insulin sensitivity like @jfricke mentioned above, will cause you to have weight issues. That whole control loop needs to be tuned and working well, but carbs like to get in there and gum up the works…

(Scott Shillady) #11

I think this blog post by :richard: explains the keto myth supperbly
What my dog taught me about CICO


CICO does work, the problem is, you have to eat less and less to maintain the same deficit because you BMR keeps going down. Also, you are not addressing the metabolic and hormonal reasons that you are over weight.

(betsy.rome) #13

But if you eat keto to plan - 20 carbs or less, protein scaled to lean body mass - but eat too much fat (“to satiety”), it can stall you or make you gain, yes? Or will it rev the metabolism? Some folks have little to no functional stopping-mechanism to tell us when we hit satiety till it’s too late. (did I really eat all that?)

(G. Andrew Duthie) #14

To Sateity and “too much fat” are contradictory. Absent underlying issues that negatively affect hunger signaling, you should be sated before “too much” arrives. If there are issues relating to hunger signaling, those may require addressing separate from the question of macros, etc. and I would recommend working with your doctor or finding a decent endocrinologist if the issue is hormonal.

(Richard Morris) #15

I believe the reason why biggest loser dieters all yoyo’ed was because they are all probably hyperinsulinaemic. It’s highly unlikely that humans can get to be 300+ lbs without being insulin resistant. So these people make enough insulin to inhibit lipolysis if they eat carbs and protein.

What they do is they eat hypocaloric amounts of carbs and protein (low fat of course), and they increase their apparent exercise. This is the precise of Calories in: Calories out.

But they can’t use much stored energy (because they are hyperinsulinaemic and eating things that make them make even more insulin) and they have less energy coming in, and they are doing more apparent exercise … so what happens?

Well the law of thermodynamics is a thing … so their bodies drastically reduce essential services (BMR plummets). And when that threatens survival, only then does their insulin drop a little and they can burn a little more body fat. But the underlying cause - the fact that they make a LOT of insulin for the same response as a normal person does not change.

What happens as soon as they slow down on the restriction, they start putting weight on again back up to meet their level of insulin resistance and because their MBR is now in the toilet there is a good chance they over correct and end up weighing more.

The answer is we need to lower insulin, and our bodies will do the rest because they are a significantly better calorie counters than we ever will be. We lower insulin by eating less foods that require insulin to be made (carbs and protein), spending less time eating (intermittent and extended fasting), building muscle (lifting) and then using it (HIIT) as a way to clear insulin, and using drugs that reduce insulin resistance (metformin, Berberine).

"exercise doesn't help with weight loss"
Eat before or after exercising?
(Genevieve Biggs) #16

Wow! Lots of good replies here. Thanks everyone. Very helpful.


@Genevieve, any of the CICO diets work…temporarily. That’s the key word…temporarily. And then the body readjusts the level of metabolism rate, or other hormonal changes occur, or the person can no longer keep up with the draconian CICO regimen.

(Ross Daniel) #18

Great way to put it @richard!

(betsy.rome) #19

Thank you Richard, as always, boiling it down to the essential bits.

(Guardian of the bacon) #20

I’m not leaving this page until my likes are refreshed. TOO important not to like this post. Supposedly I only have 2 minutes left.


You can book mark a thread or a post to come back to it quickly.

(Mark) #22

Bravo Richard, bravo

(Guardian of the bacon) #23

Thanks Bob, I was basically staging a mini protest that I was out of likes…:scream:

(Karen Parrott) #24

I do have to monitor my CICO on Keto because I don’t get normal hungry/ full signals all the time. Not my fault as I have genetics for extra ghrelin hunger hormone.

It sucks but not as much as being 6 years old and being told I was a bad person. Or being in WW and told to eat anything I want in moderation.

It is what it is for me. MFP is my best tool

(Richard Morris) #25

I love that feature - that’s how I collect “MAIL” for the podcast